We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom • Hacker News Board

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#191

Post by MrTonyD » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 10:39 PM UTC

ambulancechaser wrote: post #185

MrTonyD wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and…

I'm not sure that I see the connection between Linux at Oracle and the group of "Larry, Scott, IBM and HP" wanting Bill Gates to neuter SqlServer. Could you explain in more detail? This whole saga is fascinating, especially since I've come from a generation where Linux has such a connotation of quality.

Yeah, I guess the connection isn't obvious. Bill had decided to start competing in the SQL space. He announced a bunch of features that matched Oracle's enterprise features 1:1 and promised to make SQLServer scalable and supported by a big consulting force. So Larry met with Scott/HP/IBM and to move forward with a "low cost linux appliance" with software to compete in the various segments of the PC space - they would almost give the whole thing away for free. Larry met with Bill with a list of demands in exchange for killing the project. It took a series of several meetings. I don't know the specifics asked by IBM/HP/Sun, since I only heard the Oracle side of the story. I believe we had, at one point, 200 engineers from those companies there at Oracle HQ making Linux work. I know that we flew in Linus to explain to him some of the changes (since they were enterprise kernel features that he had no background with) - and he green-lighted the changes (they really just matched what was already in the UNIX kernels from HP/IBM and others.)

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#192

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 10:40 PM UTC

794CD01 wrote: post #83

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user I've got an objection to DRM: it restricts me from using products that were already legally bought-and-paid-for. I bought a Blu-Ray drive for my media computer. My friend brought over a Blu-Ray copy of "The Social Network". It turned out that we could not play the film in the drive without paying an additional fee for a proprietary, DRM-enabled Blu-Ray video player application. This is particularly bullshit…

There's nothing wrong with selling hardware and software separately. This is the kind of laziness that gave Windows a desktop monopoly.

There's everything wrong with selling hardware that cannot work for its intended purpose without additional proprietary, for-profit software. Would you buy a car if you had to pay again to receive a steering wheel, a transmission, or a key? No.

Or to take an analogy closer to home, NVIDIA and ATI both sell graphics cards. They also both distribute proprietary device drivers as binary blobs. They do not charge money for the binary blobs on top of what they already charged for the card itself.

Nobody has to give anything away for free, but charging twice to use one piece of hardware for its intended purpose oughtn't be allowed.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#193

Post by alanwatts » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 10:41 PM UTC

HerraBRE wrote: post #184

kardashev wrote: post #87

From the comments it doesn't look like many read the article. Here's the tldr: Free software won. Yay! However, what about hardware, infrastructure, and services? Oops. All those things have been become increasingly centralized. Centralization has diminished our privacy, and therefore our liberty. Time to put restrictions on corporations so we can have liberty again. --------------------------------------------------…

You wrote: "Now the only part I disagree with is the last part. Laws and regulations got us into this mess in the first place. These companies are huge because they can sue or prevent others from competing through laws and regulations." I think this is dangerously wrong. It completely glosses over and overlooks the fact that economies of scale are real and larger organizations can solve larger problems. The guy with…

>Rules are necessary to create a level playing field when power distributions are asymmetric.

It's a Catch-22 when the rules (laws written on paper) were what made the power distributions so greatly asymmetric in the first place.

This is quite obvious when studying tribal cultures as compared to civilized cultures. It's also worth noting the inherent distributed organizational design of tribal cultures as compared to the inherently centralized design of civilized cultures.

>Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we didn't have any delinquents. Without a prison, there can't be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white man arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.

-Lame Deer

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#194

Post by bigger_cheese » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #19

deng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has no lineage in common with Linux. That's not what he wrote. In its initial release, OS X did depend heavily on free software (Samba, Apache, GNU, etc.), which again thrived because of Linux.

Solaris was a much bigger deal than Linux well into the OSX era. In fact if Linux had never happened Solaris would probably still be around and we'd be arguing about how much OS X owes to Solaris and whether it matters that SunOS predated NEXT but Solaris didn't.

The computer labs at my uni were Solaris workstations almost everyone hated them. I completed most of our assigned work using Linux on my home pc (along with a heap of other students in my class) this was in late 90's.

Everyone was buzzing about Linux. The general attitude was 'Why would you run Solaris when you could just run Linux'

Maybe in other segments Solaris was a 'big deal' but for students and developers Linux was a game changer.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#195

Post by microDude » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 11:03 PM UTC

MrTonyD wrote: post #82

gaius wrote: post #6

Apple's OS X, which wouldn't be what it is if Linux hadn't already been the leading nix OS.* Well that isn't true. NeXTStep was built on the 68k from 4.3BSD which originated on the VAX. It has no lineage in common with Linux, and in fact pre-dates it. And OSX now is by far the most popular workstation Unix. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.svg

Well, since I worked on the team moving NeXTstep to the i386 family at NeXT, I can say with certainty that Linux played no role at all. We had copies of ATT UNIX and BSD UNIX which had portions already running on Intel (so we didn't have to completely reinvent the wheel.) There was some discussion about which UNIX we should be using on Intel in order to move it all to Mach - but the easy path was to build on some ear…

You sir, have some interesting stories to tell.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#196

Post by jsprogrammer » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 11:08 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #171

jsprogrammer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's self-reported, current occupation [0] collected by BLS. [0] http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm

Please explain how that contradicts anything in the post you responded to.

Please explain where I must contradict the parent post.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#197

Post by tobltobs » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

MrTonyD wrote: post #191

ambulancechaser wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that I see the connection between Linux at Oracle and the group of "Larry, Scott, IBM and HP" wanting Bill Gates to neuter SqlServer. Could you explain in more detail? This whole saga is fascinating, especially since I've come from a generation where Linux has such a connotation of quality.

Yeah, I guess the connection isn't obvious. Bill had decided to start competing in the SQL space. He announced a bunch of features that matched Oracle's enterprise features 1:1 and promised to make SQLServer scalable and supported by a big consulting force. So Larry met with Scott/HP/IBM and to move forward with a "low cost linux appliance" with software to compete in the various segments of the PC space - they would…

I can remember those "Built a print server with Linux" times. But I did have the impression that MS really didn't take Linux as a serious contender, not even as a server OS. Was I wrong believing that?

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#198

Post by moonfern » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 11:33 PM UTC

MrTonyD wrote: post #127

ktRolster wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I was later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux from a toy into a functioning kernel. Seriously?

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and…

There's a post on lwn.net from April 2, 2001 about the Linux 2.5 kernel summit:

https://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/

From that article: " The first presentation was by Lance Larsh of Oracle who, essentially, provided a laundry list of changes and features Oracle would like to see in order to get better performance out of high-end, large database servers "

...bullet list...

" The reception was "generally" positive - many or most of the above problems are well known and on the list to be fixed in 2.5 already. One exception was the non-preemption request, which was considered dangerous and unnecessary. "

J. Corbet is the author.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#199

Post by MrTonyD » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 11:36 PM UTC

tobltobs wrote: post #197

MrTonyD wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I guess the connection isn't obvious. Bill had decided to start competing in the SQL space. He announced a bunch of features that matched Oracle's enterprise features 1:1 and promised to make SQLServer scalable and supported by a big consulting force. So Larry met with Scott/HP/IBM and to move forward with a "low cost linux appliance" with software to compete in the various segments of the PC space - they would…

I can remember those "Built a print server with Linux" times. But I did have the impression that MS really didn't take Linux as a serious contender, not even as a server OS. Was I wrong believing that?

I knew OS people from NeXT, Microsoft, and several other companies at the time. None of us took Linux too seriously - it was too unreliable and too immature. But by the time that Oracle got it fixed (and IBM "took over" Red Hat to roll out the "new" Linux), it was a real product.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#200

Post by MrTonyD » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 11:41 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #151

feld wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can write a functioning kernel. The question is if it provides all the functionality required to run complex modern software -- especially big databases, which was pretty much your defacto benchmark back then. "Linux doesn't provide these syscalls or anything comparable" might mean you go from "runs reasonably well" to "can't run on this hardware at all because the kernel doesn't know how to do these tricks wi…

I personally know at least a dozen Linux kernel contributors. Some of them are among the most competent, prolific and enthusiastic developers out there who would code until their fingertips bleed. Most work or worked at the usual suspects, yes, including Oracle. It's the first time however I hear anyone claiming as much credit. Oracle didn't even start dabbling with Linux until 21st century, and it was already a deca…

It certainly wasn't my intent to criticize any Linux contributor. I think that there are a lot of people doing the right things for the right reasons. They do that work in a social context, though. And I think that we need to understand how our society really works in order to make the right decisions moving forward.